


sī sapis, sīs apis

by AlexSeanchai



Category: Pompeii Graffiti RPF
Genre: Disabled Character, F/F, Food as a Metaphor for Love, Podfic Welcome, Quadruple Drabble, Romantic Fluff, Romantic Gestures
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-14
Updated: 2020-09-14
Packaged: 2021-03-06 22:07:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 400
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26456143
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AlexSeanchai/pseuds/AlexSeanchai
Summary: Honey and bread are well matched. So are the women who bring them to market.
Relationships: Author Of 'Lovers are like bees in that they live a honeyed life'/The April 19th Baker
Comments: 8
Kudos: 32
Collections: Classical Flash 2020





	sī sapis, sīs apis

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Rubynye](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rubynye/gifts).



> If you are wise, you may be a bee.
> 
> Thank you, Karios, for the beta!

Flavia weaves her way through Catius's bakery, jug under her arm, purse swinging against her leg, and cup in hand. The place is buzzing worse than her beehives, so many voices at once that Flavia can't understand more than a few words. Gaius at the oven grins at her, pouring one offered cupful of water down his throat and another over his sweaty head; Marcus is too busy muttering curses at the donkey he's trying to wrangle into its harness at the millstone to even acknowledge Flavia past the moment it takes Marcus to take the full cup and hand back the empty one; Catius himself, Flavia avoids.

She finds Catia Secunda not at the mortar and pestle grinding herbs as usual but hand-kneading a batch of dough along with three other people doing the same, while Catia Prima mumbles prayers to Vulcan over the kneading machine she's trying to repair. Flavia taps her friend on the shoulder and offers the cup.

"—Oh, may Minerva bless you," Secunda says, lighting up. "What brings you here?"

Flavia glances away, swallowing nervously. The cup trembles, sloshing a bit of water over the brim onto Flavia's extended hand.

Secunda takes the cup, drinks, returns it. "Thank you. You should hurry out," she adds, "unless you want Father to insist you stay to help." She nods her head at the nearest kneader: "Marcus's wife brought him lunch and Father hasn't let her leave."

Grimacing, Flavia dips out another cupful of water to offer to Marcus's wife. Then the next person, and the next, and only when Flavia is certain everyone has had something to drink does she return to Secunda's side. By now Secunda is returning the kneaded dough to its bowl to rise, and willing, once she's rinsed her hands, to follow Flavia for a moment into the comparatively far cooler air of the marketplace.

Flavia extracts from her purse a small jar and unties the string holding it closed. Secunda exclaims wordlessly at the sight of its contents, then dips one fingertip to taste it. Flavia shifts her weight from foot to foot: will Secunda be able to tell this is one of the first jars of honey from a beehive no one but Flavia has ever tended? Even if not, will she understand?

Secunda smiles at her. "If I flavored a loaf with this," she wonders, "would it taste like love?"

**Author's Note:**

> [My comment policy](https://alexseanchai.tumblr.com/post/612627045048008704/as-a-fic-writer-i-need-every-reader-to-know): tl;dr happy comments make me happy. So do thinky comments, of course, but there exist jerks who think only thinky comments are worth anyone leaving.
> 
> Find me on [Dreamwidth](https://alexseanchai.dreamwidth.org/) and [Tumblr](https://alexseanchai.tumblr.com/).


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